Beta Weiand, a 32 years old fashion designer from Brazil, has developed an interesting project called Prêt-à-Template. Completing her studies in Fashion Design (2006/Brazil), Textile Engineering (MA 2008/Portugal) and Fashion Communication (2010/Milan-Italy), Beta Weiand currently works as a fashion teacher. She had the idea to develop a fashion drawing application and after 2 years of hard working, she and her team have launched the Prêt-à-Template App in April 2014.

What is it all about?

Prêt-à-Template is a Fashion Sketch App designed to help the fast induction of fashion drawings. Most of designers or fashion students really enjoy hand-drawing – that’s true. But there are situations when you have to develop ideas and collections very fast, and you have to decide about fabrics and cuts in a minute. I guess in those moments, a fashion drawing template could help a lot. The App we’re talking about reproduces on screen the design that would be held on paper. Using specific guidelines (TEMPLATES) fashion ideas are easy to develop so that anyone can transform his/her iPad into a fashion sketchbook and portable portfolio. There are many types of templates available: body templates for men, women, teenagers or babies, technical templates (men + women), plus sizes or maternity body templates, underwear and accessory templates (shoes and bags), and even templates for pets. There are also several tutorials displayed on the Prêt-à-Template website. The application is FREE and ready to download from App Store.

Talking about her project, Beta Weiand says: ”The first idea came up in one of my classes: the matter was fashion hand drawing and I had to display in a big board how to draw the different types of collar, lapels, sleeves, dresses, skirts in a size that everybody could see… the result was awful so I searched another way to present it: I found in the iPad my solution: with one of the many sketches apps I could connect the tablet into a projector!!! and then: the problem was solved and an idea of Prêt-à-Template was born”.

The Goal of Prêt-à-Template is also to become a platform where the sketches could be transformed into real products. That’s why Prêt-à-template project seeks, in partnership with fashion companies, to promote and host fashion contests. For instance, if a company wants a new solutions for a particular product, the Prêt-à-Template team designs a customized template of this product.

I wanted to find out a few more things. So I’ve made a short interview with Beta Weiand, the brain behind the project:

You have said that the idea of developing the template App came up while you were teaching fashion drawing. But how the Prêt-à-Template actually did start to take shape as a project?

The moment I realized the opportunity to create the App I started to search about drawing applications (in general) and I began to think how the tools would assist in the development of fashion drawings: as the scissors tool for example:

Usually there is a lot of symmetry in clothing and with the help of this tool the user needs only draw half of the design. Or the sewing thread, a simple dashed line that makes all the difference when you need to represent the stitching…

I also conducted a thorough survey about fashion illustration and fashion templates: studying the position and proportions of guidelines in order to assist the quick reasoning of fashion drawing process. In 5 months, without understanding anything about programming, I designed the whole layout interface of the App, tools, templates, patterns, website… and just after that (with the first version of the project in my hands) I started searching for partnership to make it happen.

Tell me a little about your creative team. Who are your partners?

By referral from a friend, I got to Belogik – a young programmers company in southern Brazil (Porto Alegre) that straightaway embraced the App idea! It took us more or less one year of programming and testing before launching the beta version of Prêt-à-Template App (in April 2014) . Today we are a team of 4 hardworking partners: Bruno Werberich and Carlos Pretto – programming, Guilherme Desimon – Web, and me – in charge of interface design. being also CEO.

Who are your (possible) customers?

We believe this App serves as a tool to the entire fashion creation chain: starting from students/teachers, practitioner’s designers, industry, even retailers and buyers… to anyone who is passionate about fashion. Drawing is the first step of communicate a fashion idea – What we did was making easy the process by the use of the mobile device itself, and thereby:

* Carry with you your own fashion sketchbook /portfolio;

* Not wasting paper;

* Finger touch (with no need to carry a variety of art supplies);

* Guidelines to help the rapid understanding of the body/goods proportions;

* Tools for applicability in fashion design;

* Easy to send/share and archive

You also provide coaching for the use of the App. Tell me about your workshops. Did you get a positive feedback?

The workshops are the most efficient and fast feedback: is the time where we can capture/realize the productive capacity of our tool! Working live we are able to understand the way people develop illustration, the difficulties/facilities coming on the way, and therefore we keep improving constantly… that’s why we hope expand the workshops internationally soon!

And YES we are having an incredible positive feedback! Not just mentioned as hereinbefore, as from users all over the world – through our website contact they write about what they love, what could be improved as well new ideas for future plans! (After almost a year from release there are Prêt-à-Template users in over 120 countries). This App evolves alongside to them.

Have you hosted any contest so far?

No, we haven`t yet, although hopefully soon we will announce the opening of the first one – we must say that we have high demand of users who subscribe every day on our website.

What’s next? How do you plan to extend the project?

Next step will be the launching of the iPhone version of Prêt-à-Template: celebrating one Year of our App on the Apple Store (April 2015). People have been asking about it since always, we are taking longer to launch because first we want to be sure to give the best arrangement of the tools and this way to make the user to have a pleasant experience in designing on such a small screen device…

About our plan to extend it: We believe in the collaborative creative development of fashion drawing and therefore Prêt-à-Template will seek to expand our platform at this level.

Thank you, Beta. We wish you luck in all your projects which sound really exciting!

I have already wrote about Hood by Air as one of the most promising young brands of Ready To Wear. Now that HBA showed their latest work at NYFW, I’m even more excited. It seams that HBA’s creative Shayne Oliver succeeded to take it to the next level. The brand grows up every season, and it grows nice! For Fall 2015 season, anyone can note a well-grounded approach to androgynous streetwear which is already a HBA signature feature. While some pieces look really avangarde, the clothes are still wearable and highly desirable, paired with a perfect styling. Take the large pleated trousers, the deconstructed fur coats or the cut-out pieces – everything in this collection looks absolutely amazing. Of course, a fashion nostalgic would say that some outfits recall former Margiela or Kawakubo styles. But that era is dead and Shayne Oliver knows well how to use all references and put them into a winning formula. At the end of the day, Hood by Air is a genuine streetwear label. It is about what real people would really enjoy to wear. The shoes are stunning again, especially the way they melt with the pants. The casting is essential in each Hood by Air show – this time again it gives a particular flavour to the clothes. With the aid of Amy Farid (hairstyling) and Inge Grognard (makeup), the beauty was impeccably solved too.

Recently, while I took a photo to a friend of mine who was wearing a sport blouse adorned with a reflective grid print, I noticed the photo resulted was all black except of the grid which turned white. I thought that was cute and I shared it on Instagram. And I have also learnt what happens when you use reflective items in photography.

A similar phenomenon inspired the Betabrand‘s Chris Holmes flashback collection. While sporting reflective clothes during several performances, DJ Chris Holmes noticed that some photos taken during the shows were ruined because of reflection effects. But that was also the starting point for developing a series of fashion items designed to ruin paparazzi pictures. That is how flashback’collection was born.

The line contains five pieces; ‘photobomber’, ‘illuminati jacket and pants’, ‘silver screen scarf’ and the ‘halo hats’. The fabric used was coated with glass nanospheres. The highly reflective garments became some kind of ‘magic kit’ able to help people who do not want their picture taken. Basically, we deal with a 2-in-1 concept: regular clothes on a daily basis + invisible wearer when captured in photographs. That’s a smart, funny and simple idea – I like it!

With the recent Rag & Bone Menswear campaign, it appears that we stay in the field of dance. The Rag & Bone Men Fall 2015 campaign is outstanding in many aspects: it features really nice outfits (lots of shirts, parkas and draped knits), everything is finished with a perfect styling, the casting is remarkable and unexpected for a fashion campaign. Think Lil Buck or Mikhail Baryshnikov!

Rag & Bone also released a short video featuring Buck and Baryshnikov (worth to see it!). Inspired by dancing and streetstyle, the entire collection is very dynamic, playing a lot with body movements and the power of expression through clothes. Once again, Mikhail Baryshnikov – 67 years old, is absolutely fabulous.

Russian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin dons an amazing performance for Hozier’s Take Me to Church music video. The video was directed by famous photographer David LaChapelle. I think this way of combining music with dance, as we saw earlier at Sia who partnered with Maddie Ziegler and Shia LaBeouf, is a relevant trend. And it is extraordinary.